My partner and I met on okcupid where one of the "match" questions is "Would you rather live in good times or interesting times?" Just about everyone (including him) answered "interesting times" and I had posted a little comment on it saying something along the lines of "I feel like people are not actually thinking through the implications of this."
Now whenever something "interesting" but shitty happens (see: the pandemic) I say, "remember when everyone on okcupid said they'd rather live through 'interesting' times...?" I'd prefer to just read about it in the history books.
Totally the times we are living in are interesting AF if you abstract yourself from the present picture like
"AI taking and automating jobs, what will those silly humans do ?"
"Damn they really got of that pandemic fast, at least the developed societies, think about it three years, bro, and it was gone.
A couple hundred..., decades ago this would not be possible "
"Planet Earth on a climatic crisis, will humanity persevere, will they revert those changes, how would they take out big oil?"
"Global conflicts emerging, food and hunger on low developing countries, depressed and aging population on developed ones, will this dummy humans ever get an hold of themselves?"
Totally interesting topics for an alien overlord, but for us are just topic of our daily doom scroll and anxiety, 1984 similar books are interesting AF, now living them is a total different story (pun intended)
Dude, none of these are gonna be considered "major." If you were to travel to the year 2500 and asked people about COVID-19 or the war in Ukraine, only huge history nerds would have any idea of what you're talking about
I think that the first AGI, which will probably be this decade, will be considered a major historical event by 2500, just like how we still consider the invention of the printing press a major historical event.
If the Ukraine war ends up escalating into WW3, I think that will count as well, unless we get up to like WWX.
If David Grusch is right, I think disclosure would make that list.
You mean we're not still talking about the Cocoliztli epidemic and the Eighty Years' War?
You're setting the bar a little high by putting us 500 years in the future, though.
I think things just 100 years or so ago can be considered "major", and COVID-19 and Ukraine might both make the bill.
Hot take. Would you really disagree that things have been fucked for the last 3+ years? Regarding "progress in general," at this point, it doesn't even feel like we're moving in the right direction in many ways unless you're a Christian billionaire.
Yeah, that's basically what I was thinking. The world's starting to feel more & more chaotic with good things turning bad.
Climate is fucked, political tensions are high, rogue technology is active everywhere (I don't even mean AI, just bots and privacy in general), people in power are taking rights away from women (and I don't just mean third world countries, America) etc.